Abstract

This article looks at the case of Corbett v Corbett, the founding case for the law on transsexuality in the UK, which denied marriage rights to transsexuals because they were not of 'opposite biological sex', and which provoked the passage of the Marriage Act 1971 in which was enshrined this notion of biological opposition as a prerequisite for legal marriage. The article examines the formal construction of this case and how legitimacy was conceptually constructed for the eventual pronouncement on sexual identity. It seeks, therefore, to lay bare the founding moment of law on transsexuality in the UK, in all its paradoxical self-concealing ignominity.